LFF Dispatch 3: The Ides Of March, Terri, Wuthering Heights.

Early on in George Clooney’s super-cool, super-dark spin on American politics The Ides Of March, Ryan Gosling’s wunderkind campaign manager, Stephen Meyers is playfully called “the big man on campus.” Is it life imitating art or art imitating life, as Gosling is certainly scaling the heights of mount Hollywood quicker and smarter than any other actor in recent memory? A trio of hits in as many months, with Drive, Crazy, Stupid, Love and now Ides anointing him into Clooney’s inner circle, it’s as if Gosling hired his screen-self from Ides to mastermind his campaign of cinematic dominance.

Continue reading

“The American” at the 2010 London Film Festival

Rudely awakened from his Swedish love nest, cold-blooded American Jack executes three people. The striking landscape he inhabits is too exposed, too clear from the clutter of civilisation to shelter a professional man of violence. He feels compromised, but a city won’t do either, that would be too intrusive for his Bushido sensibilities to cope with also. What he needs is a happy medium and he needs it yesterday.

Rome. Only assassins ever use pay phones anymore. On the other end of the line Jack’s Italian connection, Pavel, gives him an out: an old mobile phone and a grotty Fiat Tempra. It doesn’t feel right and neither does his safe house. Jack scopes it out, another pay phone, a tractor, and a woman sweeping her step, plus an open line of fire. Jack u-turns for the mazy streets of Castel del Monte – if it was good enough for the Medicis, it’s good enough for Jack. Continue reading

“Up in the Air”: post-awards season meditation

I’ve heard a lot about “Up In The Air,” partially because it was just Oscar season, and partially because reviewers across the country have written about it as excessively as sports writers wrote about Cassius Clay. This made me want to wait a little while, because reviewers ruin movies for me.

Now I don’t want to spoil the movie for you, so don’t keep reading unless you’ve already seen it, or you just don’t care. To spell it out for you: SPOILER ALERT. Don’t come crying to me later. Continue reading

By George, whatever next?!

Some time ago, I entered a contest. The prize was a chance to star alongside George Clooney in a Nespresso commercial. I never heard back from the contest organizers, so I suppose they picked someone else, which is a shame, really, because with the number of Nespressos I down per day, I was the perfect candidate.

I’ve always found Mr. Clooney rather yummy, and I’m sure that a couple of hours spent in his wobbly-headed, charming company wouldn’t be too much of a drag. Come to think of it, as anyone who has ever seen my walk can attest, wobbly heads are something George and I have in common. We’d probably look quite funny ambling down the street together, sort of like those weird little plastic dogs sometimes seen on the back window ledges of cars, though I doubt this common trait has anything to do with drinking too much coffee.

I don’t go out of my way to drink Nespresso because Mr. Clooney endorses it; like millions of other people, I have simply fallen prey to Nespresso’s fabulously practical coffee machines and am now handcuffed to the brand. And while I’m aware that the hundreds of capsules I go through every year leave a carbon footprint worthy of the Yeti’s entire family, let me assure you that my large feet carry me around the local recycling plant faster than you can read a Starbucks menu.

The other day, while zipping around the village recycling facility with yet another trunk-load of semi-sorted rubbish, I ran into one of my wackier girlfriends. There, squirming beneath the rapacious eye of the man who ensures that, since there’s a place for everything, everything’s going to be BLOODY well put into its place OR ELSE, we giggled up a zany idea. Continue reading

Sexy movies that make you want to stab yourself

EW is a magazine that takes itself seriously when it comes to movies. Their reviewers are the sort of people that will swirl their glass of dessert wine before giving you a lecture on French cinema when, really, you’re just in line for the bathroom, man.

When you take this into account, it becomes pretty clear that the majority of what EW’s critics like is going to be obnoxiously artistic and annoyingly socio-political. So much so that EW has become my favorite guide to newly-released movies; I simply go against their advice on a regular basis.

A movie that gets a “C-“ is probably chilled out and fun, whereas the movies that rate an “A-“ usually leave me wanting to dress up as a clown and set myself on fire at a child’s birthday party (which would actually be perfect fodder for the sort of movies that EW likes, provided you filmed the whole thing in black and white and then scored it with a sitar).

So when EW published their list of picks for the 100 Sexiest Movies in Cinema, I figured that what they had really done was compile a list of the movies most likely to slash the tires, shatter the windows, and steal the stereo out of my sex drive. Naturally (since I’m writing about it), it turns out that I was right. Not all of the picks were horrible, and some I hadn’t seen. The rest are below. God help us all. Continue reading